Why Chai..?

• India runs and lives on tea and it is second in terms of productions

and the consumptions in overreaching productions .
• India is the place where in office ,college ,meeting etc. have tea break
not a coffee break.
• Unlike coffee there are very few tea bars that are devoted to culture
of tea.
• As of today there are over 1870 cafes in the country .In comparison
there are just 41 tea cha bars in India.
• After winning the government bid to open the store in M.G.Road,
chai point saw 20 times more sales than any other stores and got
opportunity to open two more stores in Infosys campus and at the
airport.
 Case Overview
• Amuleek Singh Bijral founder of the Chai Point
• After his graduation when he visited back to India he planned to open
outlets which serve chai.
• Bijral decided to pursue operational management job so that he can learn
how to manage and lead a company.
• Chai Point : Early days
• Bijral and his friend Sharma decided to run independent pilots in
Bengaluru and Pune.
• Bijral opened 3 stores in Bengaluru and Sharma used to run 2 stores in
Pune.
• As because the people of Bengaluru was quite fast moving than the
people in Pune, the stores in Bengaluru did marginally better than the
store in Pune
• 3 stores in Bengaluru helped to stretch the revenue up to INR 1 Lakh
per month and 10% increase in revenue each month.
 Continued…
• As chai point got splendid response from people Bijral invested INR
3million from his savings.
• Bijral opted Khanna as the co-founder.
• For his new firm Bijral hired employees from IIM’s as because he wants
the workers to be lot more innovative.
• Bijral and Khanna convinced CEO’s of large firms like John bilbrey
( Hershey’s ), Pramod ( Genpact), Davinder singh ( Ranbaxy ) to invest
10million in chai point.
• With the help of all the funds Bijral established new stores which was
about 400sq.ft and serves 100ml of chai for 15/18 rs.
• After winning the government bid to open the store in M.G.Road, chai
point saw 20 times more sales than any other stores and got
opportunity to open two more stores in Infosys campus and at the
airport.
 Operational Pivots
• In 2012 Bijral convinced the investors to invest 10million again to
change the course of the existing stores.
• Changing the target market
• Indian had Rs 1.5 trillion chai market which has a CAGR of
23%.
• Bijral focused on 20% of the market which consisted of white
collar workers.
• By keeping the target market in mind chai point changed its
retail store format and it shutdown nine of its existing store in
order to set up new ones in area consist of more white collar
employees. Ex: Corporate hubs, high streets.
• In addition with changing the store designs chai point started
to offer iced tea’s, milk shakes and food items.
 Continued…
• In May 2014 Chai point received 92million fund from Saama
Capital.
• The main USB of chai point is quality product, reasonable
pricing and hygienic environment.
• Chai point began to build its retail stores more in Bangalore
and Delhi and some of its neighbouring regions. By setting a
newer store in Pune Chai point started to expand its stores in
newer cities like Hyderabad and Mumbai.
• In 2015 Chai point started ‘Made for Chai’ and started selling
multigrain cookies and some healthy traditional Indian
snacks which compliments chai.
• By the end of December 2015 chai point had 50 retail stores.
 Chai on call : Launching a Delivery Service

• Chai point thought of following their customer to their

home by providing delivery services
• It introduced thermo flasks so that customer can buy large
amount of tea for takeaway.
• After starting the delivery services sales increased by 25%
and the average order size tripled.
• Later by considering the problems by flask which can threat
the quality of Tea, Chai point introduced the disposable
flask which was easy to use.
 Continued…
• By June 2014 when the flask became ready to use, chai point
started it’s delivery services “Chai On Call” over phone,
where customers could order their chai to doorstep with in
30 minutes by using the mobile app or the chai point
website.
• When Chai on Call was successful, chai point introduced
500ml flask with the existing 1ltr flasks.
• When Chai on Call became a big hit, chai point on Jan 2015
introduced 75 electric scooters with an in built team of
delivery partners to deliver the order.
• Chai on call contributed around 10 % revenue to the Chai
point.
 Emergence of Chai work
• Chai point was targeted at white-collar office workers as well as
corporate clients.
• Bijral started accepting B2B bulk tea orders for 6 months contract.
• In 2012 Bijral started Chai@work where tea has been brewed for
some time and dispensed authentic chai instead of the premix.
• In 2013 Chai point signed its 1st large corporate giant's such as VM
ware (5000 people ), Microsoft and GE.
• In Jan 2013 chai Point started introducing semi automatic dispenser
which helps to keep tea warm for 2 more hours.
• Chai @ work solely contributed 20% of the revenue to the chai point
business.
 Building and training teams
• Chai Point trained its people through the Mountain Trail
Academy (MTA)
• Along with the physical training centers at five cities, it also
had an online certification platform to ensure continuous
upgradation of its employees.
• MTA’s training was organized around three pillars.
• MTA had different training programs to cater to the specific
needs of each business unit.
 Developing Technology

• In 2013 Bijral decided to stop outsourcing their software

development that chai point was using as it was expensive.
• Chai point started to prepare chai in batches of litres in
each location to adjust its demand with batch size.
• This volume-based system simplified the beverage making
process and brought in standardization and consistency.
• Chai point started shark, a cloud-based technology
platform.
 An omni-Channel Beverage company
• Between 2012 and 21015, chai point had grown to three
distinct channel and also had new product line of label
snacks.
• Chai point was 15% below its target of retail store opening,
consequently with its revenue.
• Company also felt its had challenges with the semi-automatic
dispenser and the team were working to build a automatic
dispenser for their corporate clients.
• The machine was connected to a cloud platform with CRM
dashboard to track live data.